


u kno wat sucks? dying

by snackbaskets



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, au where thers such things as ghouls that happen when a person dies, canon tweaks, consider instead: Weird Uncle Hanzo, dad76? Not In My House, dark themes, ghouls can turn into poltergeists (thats bad), hana pov/hana centric, no hana ships, warnings at the beginnings of chapters, warnings for gore and character death (they get better)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-01-26 22:42:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12567840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snackbaskets/pseuds/snackbaskets
Summary: The first instances of ghouls occurred during the crisis; dead men who would stand right back up, suddenly whole again, and keep on fighting. It left medical communities scratching their heads and law enforcement reeling as they tried oh-so-desperately to keep whatever it was contained. Slowly, ghouls started turning to poltergeists-- obscene mockeries of human beings, striving only for the destruction of the living-- and panic set in. For a time, ghouls were feared beyond thought, shot on sight regardless of the person who may have become them. Now, they've become a rarity, the ghouls that do occur are then marked and monitored, poltergeist-related incidents are kept to a minimum, and what was once a global source of panic is now simply a staple of slasher films. Hiding the condition from authorities is classifiable as premeditated homicide, endangerment, attempted homicide, and worse.Hana died for the first time when she was sixteen.





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> hey yall !! this is my second fic ever, so blease be patient w me as i try to balance the schedule between it and mcbeans !! 
> 
> this chapters all exposition on how hana got where she is as a ghouly  
> i promise itl make more sense as it goes on, however, this is gonna be CHEESY ASS HELL......
> 
> WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER!!!!!!!!!  
> -GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF BLOOD, INJURIES, GORE
> 
> PLEASE READ WITH DISCRETION !!! take care of yourselves n i hope ya enjoy !!!

Hana died for the first time when she was sixteen years old. 

She’d been on the field with MEKA for about nine months by then; plucked right off the Starcraft leaderboards and plopped into the cockpit of a machine she never thought nor wanted to understand, forced to battle against a threat she used to have nightmares about as a little girl. The omnic came out of the sea again, surfacing to push against the shore as it had every few days that month, another assault as it tried to clamor its way onto Korea and wreak havoc on the world. 

She was wearing pink nail polish that day. It was a less than a week old, just beginning to chip from her last appearance onstage, flaking off in chunks where she picked at it. 

“Song! Swing left, It’s got eyes on you!"

One of her fellow pilots, she’d never met her in the flesh until she saw her in standard issue fatigues. Until that day, she was a colorful spot in the chat of some of her favorite games, ‘Sodapoppie,’ chiming in with a voice like music that made Hana think of candied green apples and the fair at night. 

“Got it!” she shouted back, hearing the tinny feedback of her own voice ring through the comms. 

She urged her mech left, letting its feet skim the water as she swooped in low to avoid the dripping, mechanical behemoth of an appendage that followed her. The twin-prong claws of the omnic clamped down hard on the space she was just a moment before, snapping together like a vice, deafening even from within her machine. 

She lighted on the robot’s back, aiming for the joint of one of its massive shoulders and firing a volley of rockets at it, taking some small amount of joy in the horrific, mechanical scream that followed, both from the warping metal and the waterlogged synthesizer trapped somewhere inside the omnic’s mossy hull. 

She grinned, for herself and for the camera mounted on her HUD, shouting a gleeful “GG!” as one of the omnic’s arms plummeted into the sea, thrashing the coast with a spray of salt and a few unlucky fish. She hopped from its back before it could reach another of its many arms back to grab her, rocketing away to land on the stump of another severed limb. She and Poppie had gunned it off less than a week prior, but what was once a gaping wound in the machinery was now an ugly, folded mass of metal, soldered shut and gleaming like a knot of scar tissue. She didn’t let that stop her. Another concussive blast of rockets against the joint, and bits of metal started to bend and bow out of her way. The hard-light ammunition in her mech’s guns helped speed along the process, gouging open a space large enough for her to fit through. 

“Song, what are you doing?” her commander barked, a little staticky from being so far away. He was holed up in an emergency shelter, pointing them at where to go and ordering them around based on the visuals he got from their cameras.

“I’m going in,” she snarled, vicious and grinning, and gunned her thrusters forward without waiting for his response, scraping paint off the shell of her mech as she forced her way inside the beast like a parasite. 

And one hell of a parasite she was. She marched her mech through the twisting knots of wires and sheeting, firing at anything that looked remotely breakable, using her mech’s back to heave chunks of metal into churning gears, making them shudder and stop in their path. Over the comms, she could hear Poppie cheering.

“Go, D.va, go!” she chanted, over and over, and a quick glance at the chatroom rapidly scrolling down her HUD had the sentiment repeated tenfold, hundreds of thousands of spectators watching her path of destruction and willing it to go on. Who was she to disappoint the crowd?

Hana wormed her way deeper into the innards of the omnic, grinning like a maniac, ignoring the furious screaming of her commander in her ear in favor of listening to the agonized squeals of the thing around her. Flashes of light surged outward along the wires from somewhere deeper inside, and she followed them like a scripture, digging her way through now-shredded sectors of the beast with rockets, bullets, her mech’s bare arms. The further inward she thrashed, the brighter the lights became, until everything was bathed in gold as narrow pathways opened up into a cavity lined with spinning gears and working pistons, at the center of which was a pulsating, ribbed cylinder of brightness that hummed louder the closer she got. 

She didn’t hesitate to start tearing it apart. Two sets of rockets had it sparking and fizzing, and the longer she set her guns to its middle, the louder the humming became, until it was a migraine-inducing whine--not that it slowed down her any. As soon as she’d entered the chamber, her commander had fallen silent, instead replaced with a dozen voices singing along to Poppie’s chant over and over again, thumping in time with the beat of her heart.

The chat on her HUD was so frantic that she couldn’t hardly track the scroll of words down the screen, let alone read them. Most, if not all were the same shape, the same size, the same phrase repeated ad infinitum as she tore apart the monster from the inside out. 

Another slew of rockets into the cylinder, and another scream shook the space around her. The gold light had begun flashing erratically, blinking at odd intervals at odd brightnesses as if it were struggling to stay online. She hadn’t let her fingers of her triggers once, and didn’t plan on it now. 

As suddenly as the flashing had begun, it stopped, the mechanical whir that was there only a moment previously falling completely silent, making the space feel uncomfortably unoccupied, the crack of Hana’s guns echoing painfully against the groaning metal around her. She launched another volley of rockets at the cylinder, waited, and launched another. Then a third, a fourth a fifth.

“Just to be sure,” she heaved, smiling wide and genuine the way she only did when she was winning and she knew it, lips pulled back to bare her teeth, eyes blazing and ready to seek and destroy anything that came between her and her victory. “That’s one for D.va, zero for you.”

The chat exploded on her screen, flashing fast enough to make her dizzy, the cheers of her fellow pilots making her ears ring. She didn’t come back out the way she came, though, instead opting to tear through as much more of the omnic as she possibly could. She didn’t know what that cylinder did, but she wasn’t naive enough to think that was the end of the monster. Again, she dug through wires and tore apart heavy metal joints, forcing her mech to power through it despite the flashing warnings on her screen. 

Further and further she dug herself in, until she could smell sea salt again, mixed with the awful dry stench of burning metals and ozone, and then she dug in further, punching her way through anything and everything she could until the metal buckled under her mech’s guns and she could see the sky. Her mech was wailing, now; she would have to fly it down to one of the waiting mechanics before she could throw herself back into the fray again, but she didn’t care. Instead, she lifted one of her mech’s arms and punched it into the air, cheering, howling out her triumph for the world to hear, waiting for it to be echoed by the pilots around her.

Instead, Poppie screamed. 

“Bugs, no! D.va’s in there, she--”

Before she could finish, a wave of rockets pounded into the metal beside her, forcing it to fold inward and sever the wires connecting the appendage to the omnic’s body. She watched in slow motion as the arcing scream of steel bent inward, curling into her mech like paper. She felt the triumphant smile she’d worn only moments before drip off her face like water, replaced instead by a slow, dawning horror as the rockets pushed the omnic’s hull through the glass of her cockpit, lurching ever closer to her middle. Her soft, oh-so fragile middle, the middle she hadn’t been thinking about until that moment, instead focused on feeling invincible inside the titanium shell around her. The protective, titanium shell that was now about to impale her.

The small window of sky before her was bent shut again as the metal arced inwards and shredded the mechanics inside, rendering one of the omnic’s arms useless and leaving Hana trapped.

She didn’t scream until her control panel sliced through her insides.  
The sound that worked her way out of her throat, then, was one of pure, unfiltered terror, the kind she hadn’t felt since she was six years old and seeing the omnic rise from the sea for the first time. Her HUD flickered, the chat along the side shutting off as her camera chirped, signifying its being remotely disabled, shut down before her audience saw something too gruesome. Too gruesome, like the blood spilling over her hands as she tried to remove the solid metal from her stomach. In her panic, she slammed the eject button on her dashboard, and it launched her backward, tearing her away from the shrapnel with a sickly sucking noise. She felt it as it slid out from inside her guts, taking with it a horrible spray of blood that splattered the ground where she fell amid the rocking metal of the omnic around her. In her ears she could hear her teammates screaming for her to respond, but she couldn’t get a coherent word out of her mouth aside from the sobs that wracked her form. 

Bugs was crying.

“D.va? D.va! Hana, oh God, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to-- please, please be okay. Say something, God, please Hana, say something!” 

She tried to scream, to speak, to beg for help, but all she could manage was a horrible, wet choking in the back of her throat as she made a valiant effort to close her hands over the wound through her middle. From between her fingers, she could see the pink-grey shine of innards staring back at her, and she wanted to curl up and beg for it to be a dream. She was too young to die. She hadn’t hugged her parents before she left, she hadn’t gotten to try the new flavor of cupcakes in her favorite bakery, she hadn’t been able to finish her playthrough of so many games, she hadn’t. She just… hadn’t.

She let head thump back on the cold metal of the floor while she cried, feeling an empty numbness creep up her fingers and toes, sinking inwards like the lights to the omnic’s core, the corners of her vision blurring and darkening from a mix of tears and blood loss. She didn’t want this. She couldn’t die, not now, not when she had a life ahead of her and an omnic to beat and a hero to become. 

That was the looping thought through her head as she lay there, feeling herself slip away into nothingness with tears trying tacky on her face and blood making her fingers stick together. 

And Hana Song died at sixteen years old.

That same Hana Song proceeded to wake up approximately two minutes later, live as the day she was born sixteen years previously. 

She cracked open her eyes and unstuck her fingers, awkwardly patting the tender skin of her stomach, looking for the gouge that had been there only moments before, but found nothing but unbroken skin. She was wounded, though, that much she knew. The blood soaking into her clothes and her skin was proof enough of that. And yet, when she sat up and peeled the fabric of her suit away from where her injury used to be, she was met only with rumpled, sore tissue, ugly and ashen, but whole. 

In her ears, Bugs was still screaming himself hoarse, begging for Hana to respond while Poppie tried to soothe him into quieting and their commander ordered him to pull himself together. 

Hana opened her mouth to speak, but was stopped by the choke of something stuck in her throat and she doubled over, rolling onto her hands and knees and hacking to try and clear it. To her horror, clumps and clots of blood were what fell from her lips, followed then by a wave a nausea that forced her to her feet to be sick over the walkway she was settled on. Her mouth tasted like salt and metal, as if she’d gargled with molten copper. 

The comms had fallen entirely silent as she had her episode, broken then only by Bugs’ soft rasp of her name.

“Hana?”

“Bugs?” she croaked.

The collective explosion of sound that followed almost brought her back to her knees, a dozen voices asing some variation of “what happened” “where are you” and “are you okay,” repeated over and over along with her name, echoed between microphones in a tinny mess of feedback and noise. 

“Stop, stop,” she barked, and the comms fell silent again. “I’m inside the omnic, I don’t know what happened, and--” She paused. Was she okay? She was covered in blood, had just heaved more up into the wires and machinery below, and was fairly fucking certain there was metal inside of her guts only a few minutes ago. Was it a few minutes ago? How long had she been lying there? Was the fight still happening outside? Was everyone else still okay? How long had she been unconscious, and why was she fine now? She couldn’t say she was okay. She was, in complete honesty, the furthest thing from it. She’d just felt her life flash before her eyes, felt her future quite literally slip through her fingers, felt herself _die_. She wanted to scream it into the comms, to sob and ask for someone to come get her and take her home so her parents could hold her close and soothe her until she stopped feeling like a crime against nature. 

“I think I hit my head,” she said instead. 

“Stay back,” Toni told her, level and steady in the face of everything, same as she was when she played horror games with a rare cocky smile on her face and witty quips that chased it.  
Hana bumbled backwards, looking down at her bloodied, horrible appearance. How was she supposed to say she was alright when she looked like she’d been cut in two? 

Before she could figure it out, the metal of the joint blasted open again, bringing with it a forceful wind and the lurch of the omnic below her feet. Toni appeared in her mech a split second later, blocking the hole with the hull of her machine and spilling out of it with a flourish. Her hair was held back by a headband, making the tight curls float in a halo around her.  
Her eyes went wide upon seeing Hana and she jogged her way over, stumbling a little as the omnic rocked beneath them. She settled on her knees beside her, gently taking her face in her hands.

“Hana? Where are you hurt?”

“I’m not,” she answered automatically. When Toni gently clapped a hand to her cheek, she tried again. “I mean, I don’t think so. I don’t know.” To her horror, Hana felt her eyes starting to well up again, and she tried to wipe them away before the tears started to fall. Toni snatched her wrists before she got a chance, gently pushing them to hang at her sides. 

“Stay still,” she instructed. “I’m going to look you over, okay?” 

When Hana didn’t protest, Toni gently laid her hands first on Hana’s neck, turning her head one way, then another. She moved directly to her middle afterwards, reaching forward to search the span of skin below the bloody tear in her suit. Hana grabbed her arm before she could get there.  
Toni gave her a pleading look. 

“If you tell me to back off, I will, but I need to make sure you’re okay.” Then, softer, “Please. For my sake.”

Hana allowed her to part the suit starting to dry crunchy on her skin, skimming light fingers over the ugly tissue there.

“Oh, Hana,” she whispered, and for the first time, she saw fear written on Toni’s face.

“I don’t know what it is, Toni. I just woke up, and--” 

Toni wrapped arms around her before she could finish, curling around Hana like she could shield her from the world. Toni was almost twice her age; she’d watched Hana grow and rise through the ranks of professional gaming, played with and against her, been at the shows the top bracket all played together, offered her the best parts of their dinners and the softest blankets and even kissed her forehead, once or twice, when they parted ways. She reminded Hana a lot of her father.

Toni scooped her arms under Hana’s legs and cradled her close, gently petting her hand against her hair. Any other time, from most any other person, and Hana would have picked a fight; snapped at them that she wasn’t a child and she didn’t want to be treated like one. But with Toni holding her to her chest while she tried not to come undone, Hana couldn’t help it. She cried. Tucked her face into Toni’s shoulder and sobbed, reaching up her hands to fist them in the fabric of her suit just to be sure she wasn’t going anywhere. And she didn’t. Toni sat there and rocked them both, heaving Hana up in her arms and gently coaxing her into the mech where they both squeezed into the cockpit and Hana tried to get herself back in order. 

When they landed, medics and mechanics alike swarmed the mech, pushing instruments this way and that to get at the vehicle’s joints and assault Hana with questions about her wellbeing. Toni saved her, hooking her arms under her knees and carrying Hana on her back, staring straight ahead and answering no one until the two of them got to a tent with a doctor Hana’d never met. He was Toni’s doctor, the only one she’d ever see, though Hana never knew why. Wasn’t her business to pry.

“What happened?” he asked. 

Toni didn’t say anything, just set Hana down on the exam table and pushed the shreds of her suit away from the shiny skin beneath it.

Toni’s doctor wiped a hand down his face, sighing. He pulled a chair up to the table where Hana sat, pulling on a fresh pair of exam gloves and very gently prodding at what was once the hole in her stomach. 

“Hello, D.va,” he said. “I’m Dr. Joan. We have a lot to talk about.”


	2. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey !! sorry for the longer pause between updates, there was a family emergency and it was a lil rough, but im back !! 
> 
> hanas back in the present day now and !! her parents will be reoccurring characters specifically to Love and Support her
> 
> a lil **WARNING** : a large part of this chapter takes place in a medical setting, though the processes are not severe or decriptive

“--linking the recent massacre in downtown Seoul to an unregistered poltergeist, since identified as Jeong-Suk Park. Statements have been gathered from friends and coworkers, all of whom saying they were unaware of his condition.” 

The screen cut to a video of a young man shaking his head, gesticulating at the camera with desperate waves of his hands; his face the same shape as the mugshot flashed onscreen moments previously. Below the feed, the network scrolled letters across the info banner, naming him as “brother of poltergeist, name withheld.”

“None of us had any idea,” he said. “Jeong-Suk was my best friend-- we shared an apartment and I never knew. He got in a nasty accident a few years ago, but none of us ever thought anything of it. Especially not that he could be one of those things. They’re monsters, right? But you don't even know. They could live in the same house and you might not be the wiser. Can you imagine anything more terr--”

“Can you turn that off, please?”

Si-u, the woman behind the counter, nodded, flipping over the channel to a different news source. Bugs pouted.

“Aww, Toni. I was watching that.”

“Mm. That’s too bad, isn’t it?” 

Below the table, she gently knocked her foot against Hana’s, making her drag her eyes away from the TV. She nudged Toni’s foot back in a quiet thanks, even though the program was interesting. Hana hated and loved to hear the news stories on ghouls, really. Hated that they made her feel so rotten inside, hated that she used them to distance herself from other ghouls, loved that it worked to make her feel a little more human. 

Bugs stopped pouting to drop his phone on the table.

“Oh, shit, Toni. I forgot. Sorry, sorry, that was probably horrible to watch.” He reached over and clung to her hands, and Toni let him. “I’m a total dick, aren’t I?”

“Only a little,” she shot back, smirking. 

Toni got found out a little over a year ago; Poppie caught her changing and saw the little grey clump of skin between her ribs where a bullet had caught her, and in a panic, she’d confessed it to Nona. Nona, who, turns out, lost her sister to a poltergeist only a year previously. She went to their commander and Toni was expelled from MEKA by the end of the week. Poppie still wouldn't look Toni in the eyes, despite being assured accidents happen. Poppie was a little scared, Hana knew, scared like most people were upon seeing ghouls in their midst. Toni had a little circular icon tattooed on her cheek, now, that marked her as one, illegal for her to cover, but she’d gotten yellow petals filled in around it to make it look like a sunflower, nonetheless. It was still obvious what she was, but Toni wore it like a badge rather than a condemnation. 

Bugs was one of the few pilots who would still talk to her aside from Hana, and the three of them went out for coffee and sweets when they could. Today was one of the days they were all free, and so they sat crowded around a little round table at a bakery on the edges of downtown, one of Hana’s regular haunts since she was little. 

Si-u came out from behind the counter to refill their cups with coffee, pink in the cheeks.

Toni held up a hand. “No, thanks. I can’t afford the second cup.” Bugs and Hana both spluttered that they could cover her, but Si-u got there first.

“It’s on the house,” she squeaked, curling a lock of hair around her finger. 

Bugs leaned over the table, batting his eyelashes at her. 

“Is it on the house for me, too?”

Si-u filled his cup back up before she answered.

“No.”

Hana punched Bugs in the arm, laughing while he made a sour face. Toni chuckled, sipping her fresh mug and flashing a wink at Si-u, who made a high-pitched noise and scurried back behind the counter, holding her red face in her hands. 

“I can’t believe you’re conning that young lady into giving you free coffee,” Bugs pouted, shoveling a muffin into his mouth.

“I’m not. I was going to leave her my number, and politely tell her I’m too old for her.”

“Then why leave her your number?”

Toni shrugged. “I only ever see her alone. She looks like she could use a friend.” 

“You’re such a mom,” Bugs teased. Toni pinched his ear. 

The three of them finished their breakfasts and, after leaving Toni’s number scrawled on a napkin, they took their leave, wandering the streets as they so pleased. Bugs gaped in the windows of most every store they passed and Hana teased him relentlessly, Toni a quiet, smiling presence in their midst. Most people gave her a wide berth, her tattoo clearly visible with her hair pulled away from her face with a red bandanna, pillowing out behind her head in a dark cloud. After MEKA, she had the opportunity to grow it out, and she was taking full advantage of it. 

Bugs split off from the group when they got closer to his apartment, leaving Hana and Toni to work their way to Joan’s, where Hana had an appointment set in a half hour or so. 

Toni gently knocked into Hana’s shoulder, and she bumped her back.

“You should stop watching those programs,” she sighed.

Hana shrugged. “I’m a big girl, Tones. I can watch what I want.”

“That’s not what I mean, Hana, and you know it.” 

She didn’t push it any further, though, for which Hana was grateful. She knew her obsession with ghoul-related news was the furthest thing from healthy, but she wasn’t too keen on stopping. She needed to see the things she was capable of, she reasoned, and use that as a reason to keep herself in check. Every time the heartbeats around her got dangerously close to too loud to handle, she would recall the horrible carnage ‘geists could leave in their wake, and use it to force her head back into working properly. She liked being around Toni, because her heartbeat stuck out like a sore thumb, making it easier for Hana to focus. Toni’s heart was slow and lethargic, like all ghouls’ were, lazy and dragging like it was trying to pump molasses. 

Bugs’, on the other hand, fluttered and leapt at the slightest noise, something developed from his years of gaming, then MEKA, as well as his general jumpy disposition. Hana could pick him out from a line with her eyes closed; liked to listen the the frantic drum in his chest while they piloted or gamed and pretend it was her own.

Toni seemed to notice her spacing out, and gently brushed a hand down her back, bringing her back to the present. Hana held the door for her as they walked into Joan’s temporary office, having become more and more permanent the longer they went without the omnic resurfacing.

His secretary waved them in, where Joan was currently scurrying back and forth across the room, muttering to himself and trying to reorganize yet another stack of books. He looked up to find them standing there, and abandoned his task, leaving it in favor of giving Toni an enthusiastic hug and squeezing Hana’s shoulders. 

“Is it 11:30 already?” he gasped, turning about to try and find where he’d hung the clock on his wall.

Hana jabbed her thumb over her shoulder where the clock swung lopsided above the door. 

“Oh. That it is.”

Joan shuffled about the room, cleaning up odd papers and moving the majority of the mess to his desk. Among the papers littering the room were a menagerie of research papers on ghouls, all marked up with varying colors of highlighter and pen.

Toni turned Hana to face her and gave her shoulders a gentle squeeze.

“Thanks for coming out to breakfast, Hana, it means a lot. Let me know how your appointment goes.”

Hana grinned back, clasping her shoulders in turn. 

“Anytime, Tones.”

Toni brushed a hand over her hair and turned to leave, waving at Joan as she went. Joan waved back a little clumsily, turning on machinery and pulling out a clipboard from under the stack of miscellany on his chair. He spoke only once the door to his office was closed again, and he had turned the lock. 

“So, Miss Song, how have you been?”

Hana wandered over to the exam table and hopped up on it, propping herself on her hands and leaning back.

“About the same,” she shrugged.

Joan nodded, made an exaggerated mark on his clipboard, and clapped his hands. 

“Alright! Excellent, I’ll see you in a month.” 

Hana rolled her eyes. 

“Ha, ha. Hysterical.”

“I’m really only half kidding, you know.” He walked over by her side and gently tapped the end of his pen against her middle. “If I may?” 

Hana pulled her shirt over her head, sitting up straight and letting Joan lightly prod at the ugly grey skin over her stomach. 

“Has it been bothering you at all?” he asked, taking a scalpel and cutting away a sliver of the ashy tissue, carefully setting it into a petri dish and placing a cheerful bandaid over the incision, despite its being scarcely larger than a paper cut.

“Not really.” She reached under the strap of her bra and rubbed at the indent the adjustable plastic piece had left in her skin. She needed to get a new one; hers seemed to get smaller the longer she was in MEKA, the elastic band around the back getting uncomfortably tight as she put on more and more muscle. It was a bummer, too-- the pairs she had now were comfortably worn in, and buying new bras was expensive. She’d started wearing sports and compression tops more often than just outside her mech, but it was nice to be able to wear something cute every now and again. Made things feel a little more like how they used to be, when she was just a streamer. 

“Not really?” Joan asked. 

Hana shrugged.

“I mean, it itches sometimes. Like. On the inside. Only when I’m stressed, or in big crowds, though.”

Joan worried his lip, tapping his pen to his mouth for a moment before scribbling on his clipboard. 

“Does that happen often?”

“No.”

He hummed, staring resolutely at his paper.

“What’s that mean, Joan? And don’t try to sugarcoat it, either. That doesn’t help me.” 

“Well, ghouls who’ve had… episodes... often say that it was preceded by a kind of itch in their injuries. Generally, these kinds of occurrences get more frequent the closer a ghoul gets to…. You know.”

“You’re saying I’m gonna lose my shit?” Hana asked, folding forward, her hands clasped and elbows resting on her knees. 

Joan grimaced. “That’s a harsh way of putting it, Miss So--”

“Joan.”

He sighed. “You’ve been a ghoul for three years without incident, Miss Song. _Three years._ That’s-- that’s a long time. Longer than most I’ve seen recorded, even.” He took her hands in his, examining the tiny swells of bone hidden just beneath her skin, noticeable only when he shone a flashlight into the side of her fingertip. “Smile, please.” 

She complied, opening her mouth wide and flashing her teeth as Joan softly prodded at her gums and the teeth protruding from them, filed down to look more human where they would otherwise seem monstrous. She’d sheared a canine too dull, last time she’d fixed them up, and the tooth had promptly come loose and fell out, replaced now by the razor tip of a new one forming in its place. 

“It’s incredible you’ve managed as long as you have. Most ghouls don’t last long enough to start developing these kinds of… characteristics.”

“‘Geist stuff, you mean.”

Joan pursed his lips. “They’re traits commonly associated with poltergeists, yes, but they don’t mean you are one. Some members of the medical community theorized that these are traits that become more prominent the closer a ghoul becomes to a poltergeist, but I’d disagree. In my experience, these are just features that appear over time, regardless of a person’s likelihood of having an event. Habiba--Toni, I mean-- she shares many of these same traits, and she’s done just fine until now.” 

Hana made a noncommittal grunt as Joan shined a light at each of her eyes, recording how her pupils dilated with the change. 

“How are the heartbeats treating you? Are they hard to hear, hard not to hear, what?” 

She shrugged. “I hear them all the time, I guess. I can tell how many people are in the apartments next to mine without having any doors or windows open. Sometimes I can know who’s who.”

Joan took a note on his clipboard. 

“Habiba is still the only person aware of your condition?” 

Hana hesitated. “I told my dad,” she said, very softly. Joan jerked upright, looking as if she’d just slapped him. 

“You-- did he-- oh, Miss Song, I’m so--”

“He didn’t. He promised not to tell anyone, not even my mom. I just. I was sick and tired of hiding things from him, okay? I know it was stupid, but I don’t regret it.”

Joan made a face, peeling off his exam gloves and dropping them in the trash, tiredly dragging a hand down his face.

“Then you’re very, very lucky,” he said. 

Hana didn’t respond, instead putting her shirt back on and smoothing out the fabric, freeing her hair where it got trapped under the collar. Joan leaned back in his chair, setting the books that were on top of it in a stack on the floor beside him, and sighed. Hana knew she shouldn’t have told anyone, should have guarded her secret like it was her own life, because it was. Joan’s, too. If he was exposed as treating unregistered ghouls, he could lose his license, and that would just be the beginning. Still, she was glad she had. 

“Well. There’s not a whole lot I can tell you, Miss Song. But, you’re used to that. I can advise some caution in going near large crowds, or your other triggers, but I understand many of those are things you can’t help but encounter. The most I can really do is wish you luck.”

“Thanks, anyway.” 

He gave her a concerned look.

“And you’re sure you’ll be safe at home, now that your father knows?”

She glared at him. Even though she knew he was only asking out of genuine worry, the suggestion that her father, of all people, would ever be cruel to anyone, let alone his own family, was one that made her blood boil nonetheless. 

“I’ll be fine,” she snapped. Joan didn’t apologize for asking, having since learned that begging forgiveness for having misspoken would only serve to piss her off more. Hana far preferred that the people who wronged her, intentionally or not, shut up and move on rather than acting like a simple ‘sorry’ would make things as if nothing happened. 

“I’ll see you this same time next month, then?” Joan said instead, and Hana grunted an affirmative, swinging her bag over her shoulder and leaving the office, arranging with the secretary for the charge to be made to her personal account, and not through insurance, as per usual. She told him this every time, but still, every time, he would ask. 

She was in a sour mood as she walked home, both out of frustration with Joan and with herself. Joan, a little for his comment about her father, and a little for his lack of answers. Neither were intentional, or entirely his fault, but that was why the rest of her anger was directed inward. Hana was angry with herself for her own poor temper, along with the general, fiery disgust she felt toward her ‘condition,’ as Joan called it, as if she weren’t riddled with parasites, or a blatant crime against nature, or a bloodthirsty, massacre-inducing monster waiting to happen. She knew, of course, that she held herself to a double standard; she felt none of the same malice toward Toni as she did herself, a fact which Joan had pointed out to her before. 

When she opened the door to her apartment, however, her bad mood was immediately lifted.  
Even before she came into the house completely, she could hear the jovial singing of her father, his heartbeat quick and rhythmic compared to her mother’s. 

She toed off her shoes at the door before making her way into the kitchen proper, already grinning. Dad was dancing circles through the little room, a mixing bowl in the crook his arm and the wooden spoon up to his lips as he joined the radio playing on the countertop. Mom was more sedate, watching him bound around the house as she softly clapped her hands, grinning as she laid cookies on a bake sheet before her. Upon seeing Hana, she glanced at her and rolled her eyes, at the same time Dad dropped the bowl on the counter and launched himself toward Hana, grasping her hand in his and giving her barely a moment to drop her bag before twirling her around, dancing with her across the kitchen and around the couch, which was pushed back from its usual place, definitely by her father, definitely to give him more space to hop around the house. He let her go before the counter, and she paused a moment to wash her hands before taking up the bowl Dad had left, mixing together some sweet smelling (and very sweet tasting) cookie dough. 

“What’s up with Dad?” she asked her mother, who shrugged. 

“I don’t know. He won’t tell me.”

At that moment, he shimmied over to Mom, bowing low and batting his eyes at her, one hand outstretched. 

“May I?” 

She scrunched up her nose and shook her head. 

“No. I don’t want to be touched right now.”

Dad clapped his hands together, instead tapping circles around her, crooning along to the music playing a little tinny from the radio, then proceeding to lift his arm above her like he would have twirled her, were he holding her, and Mom complied, turning in a neat circle before returning to her task of scooping cookies, giggling. 

“What’s got you in such a good mood, old man?” Hana asked, letting Mom dump some more flour into the bowl before Hana continued stirring it. 

Dad sprung forward, catching Hana’s face in his hands and smudging various baking materials on her cheeks. 

“Bunny, have I got news for you,” he grinned, spinning her around and taking the bowl from his hands, stealing a piece of dough, prompting Mom to squawk at him. “You’re never gonna believe what happened today.” 

Hana yanked the bowl back, only on principle. 

“You gonna tell us, or are these cookies just for Mom and I?” 

Dad paused for a moment, as if weighing his options. He seemed to make the right choice, however, coming up to the counter and drawing something from his pocket with a flourish. Hana and Mom peered closer as Dad beckoned them to bow their heads together, his hands closed around an object between them like a child holding a bug between closed palms. He scooted his fingers apart, barely exposing a sliver of something shiny before snapping his hands closed again. After the third or fourth time of him doing so, Hana got tired of waiting and grasped his palms, prying them apart and revealing, finally, what was closed up inside. 

Sitting, scratched and silvery on Dad’s hands, was his old Overwatch insignia. Hana’s breath caught in her throat the way it always had whenever she saw it, overcome by wonder and fascination at the same time Mom made a frustrated noise, pushing away from the counter and going back to her baking sheet.

“Hyeon, please,” she groaned.

“Did it go off again?” Hana asked, lightly dragging a finger over the old metal, feeling the scratches and dents on the surface, some new, some old. 

“It went off last year, too,” Mom snapped irritably, yanking off the disposable rubber gloves she wore whenever she had to touch soft foods, and dropping them in the trash. “And it turned out to be a fluke, just like the time before that, and the time before that, and--”

“This time is _different_ ,” Dad insisted. “It wasn’t just anyone. This recall is real, I know it is.”

“And how could you possibly know that?”

Dad grinned, eyes crinkling at the edges in a way that was infectious, so much so Hana could see Mom have to fight to keep her lips pursed, her heart fluttering in her chest.

“This one came from _Winston._

Hana felt like the floor dropped out from under her, sputtering out a disbelieving laugh.

“Winston? You’re sure?”   
“Unless there’s another talking gorilla you know.”

Dad popped open the dented little communicator, tapping a few buttons until a patchy hologram fizzled into life, the figure in it unmistakably Winston, the scientist Dad had worked with back in Overwatch’s science division when Hana was little. Dad insisted she’d met him once, when he’d taken her to work in a baby sling while their sitter was out of town. He said that they got along well. 

Onscreen, Winston delivered a stirring message, urging any of Overwatch’s remaining heroes to return in the world’s time of need. As excited as Hana was to see the organization still kicking, she felt a rising sense of nervousness building in her veins, mirrored in Mom’s rapid, panicked heartbeat,

“Are you going?” she asked, hardly more than a whisper. Dad flashed her a soothing smile, offering her his hand, turning his palm up on the table. Mom lightly laid her own pinky finger on his, but neither her face nor her heart were eased. 

“I think my Overwatch days are, well. Over,” he assured her, and Mom relaxed. “I just wanted to tell you both about it. We could all use some extra hope, these days.” 

His heart stuttered a little as he spoke, only audible to Hana’s ears. He was lying. 

Mom finally smiled back, retrieving her hand to put the baking sheet in the oven. 

“Can you two finish the next batch?” 

“Duh,” Hana said, grinning, at the same time Dad shot a finger gun and a wink at her. The conversation had overwhelmed her a little, she knew; too much stress so suddenly after what was probably close to her limits on noise and action, anyway. She disappeared down the hall toward her own bedroom, and the sound of the shower turning on a moment later was what followed. As soon as it did, Hana rounded on Dad, one eyebrow raised.

“Spill.”

“Spill what, my dearest, beloved daughter?”

“You were lying when you told Mom about the communicator,” she said, and Dad winced. 

“I forgot you could do that,” he pouted.

“So? Spill.”

“I meant it when I said I was done with Overwatch.” Dad paused a moment, flattening a sheet of parchment paper over the next baking sheet while Hana finished mixing the dough. The way he said it gave Hana an odd feeling in her stomach, equal parts excitement and dread. 

Slowly, he pushed the bowl from her hands, gently setting it on the table and taking her hands. She thought about what he was going to do next, but wasn’t willing to let herself believe it. Dad wouldn’t. He knew about her contract with MEKA, he knew now, too, about her ‘condition.’ There was no way. Even as he picked the Overwatch insignia up off the counter, she couldn’t hope it was true. He would have been suggesting she do something illegal. Something dangerous, something she could never take back. He would be suggesting she do something so very outlandish it had to have been impossible. And there, cold and heavy in her palm, was the communicator that lay open only a moment before, contrasting harshly with the warm touch of Dad’s hand over hers. She glanced down at it, then up at him. There was no way. Couldn’t be. Hana wasn’t even an engineer, like Mom or Dad, which meant he wasn’t suggesting the science division, either. The only thing she would be able to do would be to go out in the thick of things, like the real field agents used to do, the ones that showed up on posters and billboards and TV commercials. And she would only be able to do so with her mech, which also meant Dad was suggesting she _steal_ it from MEKA, which-- which was--

“I’m not saying you have to, Hana, not at all,” he said, so soft to almost be inaudible, the same voice he’d used only a few weeks prior to promise her that he’d never tell a soul about her secret, to hold her close and swear that he loved her still. “But I wanted you to have the option, if you want it. I met some incredible people, when I was with Overwatch, real hero types. They wouldn’t stand a chance against you.

Hana closed her fingers around the insignia, drawing it close to her chest and gaping at it as if it might disappear. 

“What about Mom?” 

Dad squeezed her shoulder. 

“I was going to tell her I was giving it to you, but she’s a little overwhelmed right now. I’ll give her some time to wind down before I say something.”

“She’s gonna be so mad at you.” 

He shrugged. “Yeah.”

“And she’s not gonna want me to go.”

“She didn’t want you to go with MEKA, either.”

“She didn’t have a choice, then. None of us did.”

“But this isn’t MEKA, Hana. This is all your choice.” He chuckled nervously, rubbing the back of his neck. “To be completely honest, I don’t really want you out there, either. It’s gonna be rough. But I don’t get to make that choice for you. I do believe you could be great out there, even if it makes us both go a little grey. We would still be so, so proud of you.”

A dozen different responses sat at the tip of her tongue, ranging anywhere between tearful, or elated, or even angry. There was no pressure, she knew, but her insides still twisted like there was. She wanted to hug him, or thrust the insignia back at him, or punch him in the arm, or all of the above. She’d say she didn’t know what she wanted, but that was a lie. As a little girl, Hana used to dream of a day when she could have a communicator like her father’s, when she could be the same kind of hero as the ones plastered on her walls. 

“I’ll tell Winston you say hi,” she said, and her voice didn’t even shake, though her hands might have been trembling. Not that she’d ever admit it. 

“Bring him some cookies,” Dad said, grinning wide despite the beginnings of tears in his eyes. 

She grasped his hands in hers, sandwiching the metal circle between them. 

“I’m gonna be kickass, Dad, you’d better be watching.”

“I’ll be there for every stream, I promise. Your mom and I both.”

“Dvafan0109?” 

“You know it.”

“Yeah,” Hana said, falling into the embrace her father offered, hiding her face in his shoulder and fighting hard against the tears trying to work their way out of her eyes. He squeezed her close, hanging on the same as he did every time before she deployed, a promise that he’d see her again. 

“I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you again for your patience !! yall are always wonderful n i love ya


	3. 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **NOTE: HANA DOES HAVE A PANIC ATTACK IN THIS CHAPTER!!** if you want to skip this part, stop at the part where she hears howling and start again when you see dialogue!! please take care of yourselves  <3
> 
> its been a while since ive gone after this one!!! i tried to write this chapter about 8589425238957 times and this time i feel like i got it good enough to post!! as always tho if you have suggestions please let me kno i love hearin em! this ones a long chap to try n make up for the hiatus since the last time i updated this fic,, my bad
> 
> so heres some Validation, friendyatta, and an intro to mccree, our 2nd ghoul n local cowpoke!!!

“It is not healthful to compose one’s diet of a single meal.”

“I agree! No more waffles, Lena!”

“And what are _you_ gonna make us then, Genji? Eggs or oatmeal?”

“I have been living with omnics for the last four years! You have a girlfriend and an apartment!” 

“Well, peanut butter is high in proteins, so--”

“No!” Genji and Tracer shouted in unison.

“I can make breakfast again,” Hana volunteered.

“We can’t let you do that! You’ve been cooking for everyone since you got here. You’ve earned yourself a break, love, don’t worry a bit about it!”

Letting Hana handle breakfast again would be a mercy, in her own opinion. Not that Genji and Tracer didn’t try, but put together they could make about ¾ of a meal on a good day. Winston’s idea of a healthy diet consisted entirely of bananas and peanut butter, and thus he was quickly removed from the cooking rotation. Enough ‘dinner waffles’ and Tracer went much the same way, and Hana was beginning to tire of Genji’s eggs and instant oatmeal. 

Winston gently wrestled away the pan brandished in Tracer’s hands, holding it high above his head as she scrabbled to snatch it back.

“We could try another of the old recipes?” he suggested.

“And have our faces melted off? I don’t think so!”

Genji scooted the teapot off the stove, whistling as the water came to a boil.

“They are not _that_ spicy.”

“Says you!”

“I would volunteer, myself, but I cannot taste,” Zenyatta lamented. 

“Thank you for the thought, master.”

“That’s quite alright! You’ve done the best you could, already. Oi! Put more sugar in mine, Genji!”

“That is the last thing you need.”

A steaming bowl of apple-cinnamon oatmeal was set before Hana, a lump of brown sugar still melting in the center. Tracer flickered from where she hung on Winston’s arm to her place at the table, knees tucked up to her chin as she leaned greedily over the bowl Genji dropped on the table with an entirely unnecessary flourish. Winston’s massive serving was the next to follow, Genji going so far as to toss a whole banana into the air and slice it as it fell, the falling slices spattering the table with boiling oats, but garnering an excited round of applause from Zenyatta and Tracer both. Genji bowed, neatly settling into his chair as Winston frantically wiped the mess from the table before it stuck. Genji hesitated momentarily before he removed the thing covering his face, his heart stuttering a little in Hana’s ears like it did every time he took it away, fingers twitching and breaths coming nervous from his lungs. Genji’s heart was odd, ticking as it beat with the rhythm of what Hana assumed was a pacemaker. It was nowhere near the strangest, though-- Tracer’s jackrabbit pulse reminded Hana a lot of Bugs, save for the sudden start-stops, hiccups, and skips that came when she quite literally jumped through time. Winston’s was low and slow, more like Hana’s, if only due to his sheer size. She didn’t know if it was normal for a gorilla, but she never asked. 

Seeing Genji’s face, at first, made Hana very seriously reconsider if she was going deaf, the long scars and extensive metallic pieces seeming greater than anything a human person could conceivably survive. The first time he removed the mask, Tracer had completely blinked out of time, appearing in the other room with her hands over her eyes and gasping ‘sorry, sorry, sorry, I swear I didn’t look,’ over and over as Genji’s poor heart sounded like it would burst and Winston choked on the water he’d been drinking. Zenyatta had been serene as always, laying a gentle hand on Genji’s arm until his breathing steadied. Hana hated to admit it, but her appetite had faded rather drastically upon seeing the rippling network of scar tissue across his skin, his upper lip nicked on the right side and revealing a sliver of his teeth even when his mouth was closed, his lower jaw pure silicon, if Hana had to guess, the flesh of his nose notched and disfigured. But he wasn’t a ghoul, instead pure and fully alive, despite all suggestion to the contrary. The second time he ate with them, Tracer had spent a decent portion of the meal staring, though she made some vain attempt to hide it. Hana had looked unabashedly, scouring over his features and picking him apart piece by piece, partially to commit him to memory, and partially to prove to herself that she could. He didn’t meet her gaze until she nodded, forcing a mouthful of cold eggs down her throat. ‘Like your eyeliner,’ she’d said, and Genji looked a little like he was going to cry, but flashed a wink and a grin her way nonetheless. It was only later that she learned her words had garnered her the absolute adoration of everyone at the table, Athena included.

This time, after so many weeks, nobody stared. Instead the focus fell on Winston, speaking around his mouthful of oatmeal and gesturing widely with his hands.

“So, I’ve received messages from, uh, agents Lindholm and Wilhelm, or, both of the Lindholms, I mean. Both Zieglers, too. They should be here in a few days.”

“Ah. It will be nice to have more doctors,” Genji said, pulse still picking up when the table turned their eyes on him. “And Torbjorn will be able to help you rebuild your mech, Hana.”

Formalities had dropped about two weeks in, once they’d spent enough days bodily wrestling in the kitchen over who cooked what and who did dishes. 

“Aw, yeah. D.va, back on the battlefield.”

Tracer cheered, and Hana shot her a finger gun, making an exaggerated blaster noise. Genji chuckled at that, casting a fond look at his oatmeal that had Tracer giggling, knocking her elbow into his side and waggling her eyebrows.

“Remind you of somebody, love?” she crooned, and Genji reached up to ruffle her hair, relenting only when Tracer blinked away, bowl in hand. 

“Is agent Mccree coming?” Winston asked.

“I am unsure. I sent him a message saying I was here, but I don’t know how many safehouses it has gotten to, yet.”

“That’s Blackwatch communication for you! Like sending carrier pigeons and hoping they stick!”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Well, neither does the whole ‘send-a postcard-all-’round-the-world’ thing you do!”

“It is safer.”

“And slower!”

Tracer and Genji kept up their bickering throughout breakfast, completely derailing poor Winston as he tried to brief them, but he seemed more resolved to his fate than actually upset about it, and made no attempt to stop them. As per the usual routine of things, Hana took to the old training rooms after they ate, practicing with her pistol and running through a few simulations that Athena put before her. Tracer offered to spar, and the two of them threw punches-- both too similar in style to catch one another off guard, using the same standard military form, but Hana had never learned any different-- and they stopped only once they could dance about the mat no more. Tracer blinked off somewhere soon after, but Hana remained, laying flat on her back and staring at the high ceilings.

Being in the lower levels of the Gibraltar base felt odd to her for reasons she couldn’t quite place, setting her mind more at ease than it had been in years, calming the itch in her skull and turning the drum of heartbeats pounding against her bones into something softer, like a cat purring from the foot of the bed. Genji liked to linger there, ghosting about the old hallways and carefully stepping from one creaky spot on the floor to the next, each of his footsteps finding the oldest boards with something like muscle memory. Zenyatta frequently drifted behind him as he went, listening to Genji tell long, meandering stories in Japanese, a language Hana only knew bits and pieces of. Neither of them minded when she tagged along, avoiding the creaky spots instead of seeking them out as she took the inverse of Genji’s path through the dusty hallways, enjoying the company without having to put in any effort of her own. 

The upstairs of the base was rather underwhelming, in her own opinion, tiny meeting rooms and narrow halls, old Overwatch insignias tacked on like an afterthought. It was stuck somewhere between homely and sterile, white walls with the scratches carefully painted over and old wood tables varnished again, not quite like people had lived there, but as if it had been a close thing. Upstairs was out of place in Gibraltar. 

Winston disliked being much of anywhere other than his lab, separated from the rest of the compound and out beyond the near-empty vehicle hangar, but was especially hesitant to go down where Genji liked to be, always wringing his hands and his pulse picking up in his chest, as if he were afraid to be trespassing. Tracer was much the same, only wandering the halls when Genji went first, though she was far more exploratory, flickering about the old recreation rooms and little kitchens, cataloguing trinkets and oddities left behind, but never disturbing them. Like the upstairs, she and Winston acted out of place in the belly of Gibraltar. 

Still, this was where everyone but Winston slept, tucked away in big, comfy rooms that lacked plaques on the doors with a few dusty pairs of clothes stowed in the drawers and, as Hana had found, a worn coloring book left in the nightstand along with a beaten thirty-six pack of crayons. Some of the pages were colored in, others covered in mindless drawings, a few signed and a few nameless masterpieces, missing sheets and shredded paper coming every now and again. Hana wondered where they all went, but never asked. She was the only one to wander the other empty rooms, turning up all the same contents down to the package of crayons (she would swap some colors every now and again, when hers got too small) and another lexicon of strangers’ forgotten artwork. She liked paging through the other coloring books late at night when she couldn’t sleep, wondering over who may have been here before and where they might be now. The waxy texture of crayon beneath her fingers was at once heartwarming and deeply saddening, filling her with a grief she couldn’t place, lurking just below the cheerful color of the books and in the margins of pictures where secret messages had been scribbled in a dozen different handwritings and languages, some with little faces and others with hearts, all of them lost to time. 

It was sitting crosslegged on the floor with her nose buried in another book that Hana heard it for the first time. The moon was high in the sky that night, casting enough light through the open window to see by, making the world soft and dreamlike at the edges. Outside, the sea breeze rattled the leaves in the trees, the miles of manmade forest built onto the tiny peninsula breathing in time to a song only they knew. Out in the distance, something howled. She knew that in a place like Gibraltar, where Overwatch had set its base and the secret animal below its feet had made its nest-- the black ops division, with a different symbol and a different name that Genji said nonchalantly but Winston and Tracer whispered like a condemnation-- she knew that here, there would be ghosts lurking. Always were in the abandoned urban cities: the shambles of Amsterdam, the stories about Eichenwalde, the unoccupied bones of what used to be Gibraltar’s living hub. There were coastal towns like them in Korea where people had fled after one too many attacks by the omnic, or unlucky ones that had been crushed entirely, the people still hanging on to them lost somewhere in the rubble. Places that humanity forgot, poltergeists did not. 

Hana’d only seen a handful, most being dead, and the others living only in photographs; human people warped beyond themselves, turned into mockeries and looking all the part, stumbling about the wreckage of tragedies and living off refuse or whatever creature was foolish enough to come close. It was what every ghoul would one day turn into, mindless and violent, completely removed from the person they used to be and instead a part of the animal _thing_ that drove every ‘geist to do what they did, to hunt and destroy and… and to spread. To create more things like her. 

Recordings of ‘geists’ calls were nothing like the real thing. _Or maybe they were, and you just couldn’t hear it until now_ , she thought, and the suggestion made bile rise in her throat. Something in the forest howled, and it was a noise unlike anything else Hana had heard in her life, torn somewhere agonizing between a scream and a roar, wrapping fingers around the lump in her gut and pulling hard, making the corners of her vision go dark. Worst of all, it filled her with the alien desire to call _back_ , to make a noise like it and let the ‘geist follow the sound, to give into the full-body itch that crawled over her skin and hurl herself into the forest after it, or worse, to go deeper into the base and spill blood the way that poltergeists always did. 

Instead, she scrambled to her knees and half-ran half-crawled from the room, her lazy dead heart beating faster in her chest than it had in years, tears threatening to spill from her eyes and knees trembling so badly she could hardly stand. Where could she go? Where wouldn’t that horrible, horrible noise reach her? Her room had a window, too, and even closing it might not be enough. Upstairs was almost all windows. Outside was completely and totally out of the question. The training rooms, though, maybe. The oldest and biggest ones were those at the end of the line, deepest underground and with only a single exit, concrete and stone prisons to trap herself in for both her sanity and the safety of those around her. _Most ghouls who’ve had… incidents, they describe feeling an itch in their injuries beforehand_ , Joan’s voice breathed into her ear, and Hana ran faster, as if she could escape the heavy drag on her limbs by running alone. The darkness that was comforting only minutes before felt cruel, cackling as it threatened to swallow her up and spit out something mangled, instead, pressing in on all sides, filling her lungs and choking her with her own hands, turning the tear tracks down her face into rivers of ice as she tripped her way down the stairs. The industrial lights of the training rooms were so close, now, and all she had to do was reach for them, hurling her whole body through the doorway and crawling on hands and knees to push against the wall, hiding her head in her arms as she curled into a sad, broken ball, wracked by sobs and gasping from having run so fast.

It wasn’t until something warm brushed against her face that she dared open her eyes.

Hovering beside her head was a round, glowing ball, playing something soft and musical as it gently rolled about in midair, casting gold light over her skin and chasing the chill from her bones. Hana slowly, shakily reached out a hand to poke it, the ball jingling a little and floating aside for a moment before returning to its place. 

“이게 뭐지?” she asked nothing in particular, her own voice sounding raspy and hollow to her ears.

“You seemed troubled.” 

Hana whipped her head up to see Zenyatta sat beside her, hands folded in his lap and head tilted at an angle. Like the one hovering above her head, the orbs around his neck slowly rolled and swayed, held up by some unseen force.

“I apologize if I have overstepped.”

She hastily scrubbed away at her eyes, trying to regain some semblance of her dignity.

“It’s fine.”

To her horror, she noticed Genji standing at the other side of the room, throwing shurikens and hopping about a few stacked boxes, giving Hana and Zenyatta their privacy.   
Which meant not one, but two people had seen Hana completely losing her shit. 

“We did not mean to intrude,” Zenyatta offered, as if Hana hadn’t been the one to disrupt them. “But you appeared rather distressed. Would you like to talk about it?”

“I’m fine.”

“It does us no good to ignore what ails us.”

“I’m-- I said I was fine. I won’t worry you again.” She tried to shakily clamor to her feet, but Zenyatta stopped her with a gentle hand on her arm.

“Please. Do not suffer alone when you are not.”

“It’s complicated.”

“I am not busy.”

Hana was suddenly seized with the complete desire to tell him. Tell him everything. The omnic’s insides, the mech crash, Dr. Joan, Toni and her being found out, her parents acceptance, all of it. Zenyatta would understand, wouldn’t he? No, no. She couldn’t tell anyone. But… keeping her secret would put others in danger. If they found out, though, they might kick her out. And then where would she go? Korea wouldn’t have her back, not after she’d abandoned MEKA and stolen their schematics. She couldn’t go home, either, no matter how fervently her parents assured her they would keep her safe. Toni and Bugs offered the same, and Hana politely declined their offers, as well. She refused to put them at risk. 

“I had a nightmare,” she lied instead.

“Would you like to tell me about it?”

“You don’t have to do this, Zen.”

“I do not have to do anything. It is what I wish to do that is done.”

Maybe a half truth could be better than the full one.

“I… dreamt about an ugly mission, back in MEKA. One of my team died.”

“Loss is a painful experience,” he agreed, and something in his voice made Hana think he understood better than he was letting on.

“Yeah. I was looking through one of the old books, you know? Something in it just… triggered the memory, I guess.”

“I understand.”

“Yeah.”

Zenyatta gently patted her hand.

“To lose someone important to us is not unlike losing a part of ourselves. It is painful, but through this pain is how we grow. We must accept what is missing, and learn to cherish both what once was, and what is. It is a lesson I am still learning, myself.”

Guilt swirled in the pit of her stomach, and she swallowed nervously, nodding down at Zenyatta’s metal hand, loosely twined with her flesh one.

“It wasn’t-- it wasn’t just that she died, it. It’s.” She shuddered.

“You do not need to tell me, if you do not wish to do so. But I am here if you need someone to listen.”

“She… got sick. When she woke up. If you get what I’m saying.” Zenyatta hummed and nodded, patting her hand again in an effort to soothe her. “And it was hard after that. I was afraid that she would change. It wasn’t the book that got me. I heard something out in the woods and it just reminded me of the things she was scared of. I didn’t want to think about it, so I ran.”

“Being aware of our fears is the first step in conquering them.” He looked over at Hana, softly closing her hand between both of his, the metal lukewarm from the systems that whirred beneath it. “It is important to know that you are not alone in these fears. The first step to acceptance is acknowledging what is changed. Would you like to tell me her name?”

Hana hunkered down, folding up on herself again, but not pulling her hand from Zenyatta’s grasp. If she did this, there was no going back. But she was D.va, god damn it, and she’d done dumber, rasher things before. They might have gotten her killed, but that’s beside the point. 

“Hana,” she whispered, and waited for Zenyatta to recoil. Waited for him to snatch back the orb that hung beside her head and scramble away from her, for him to call to the others and for them to chase her away at the points of their weapons. 

Instead, Zenyatta squeezed her hand in his, and when he spoke, it sounded like he was smiling.

“A lovely name. She sounds like a rather brave woman.”

Hana didn’t feel so bad when she started crying, this time.

Zenyatta became a regular presence in her life in the weeks that followed; the two of them spending hours holed up in Hana’s room, draping the omnic in every article of Hana’s wardrobe and a dozen beauty products, made larger by the self-indulgent trips to the little town hidden against the cliffs below the base. Occasionally, Genji, Tracer, and even Winston would join in for movie nights, in which case they would all move to one of the rec rooms and paint one another’s nails with varying success (Tracer’s hands were too jerky, and Winston’s too clunky), but they tried. Hana could still hear the ‘geists screaming some nights, but being among friends made it easier. 

Athena always assured her that they were outside the perimeter of the base, too far to be reached by the old turrets and cameras mounted in the trees and thus too far to be any danger. Still, Hana knew they were out there, and though they were miles from the border, she could hear them when they came close. Close, like one did now.

Zenyatta was sat beside her on the bed, the two of them just settling in for an evening of old comedies and colorful polishes, Hana having ordered stencils online so she could get the shapes right. Both he and Genji liked to paint their hands-- the prosthetic, in Genji’s case-- with whimsical shapes like hearts, diamonds, tiny smiles, and anything else they could think of. Today Zenyatta was feeling partial to flowers, but Hana only got seven fingers done before they were rudely interrupted by a shriek, echoing oddly through the trees and audible only to Hana’s ears. A ghoul heard only by its fellow monstrosity, she supposed. 

Instinctively, Hana was across the room in a heartbeat, snatching her handgun from where it was set on the nightstand and taking up position in front of Zenyatta as if she were still in her mech, able to protect him just by standing before him. 

“Hana?” he ventured, carefully screwing the lid onto the nearly-spilled bottle of polish, concerned, but not judgemental. 

“I heard something.”

“We are safe here, my friend.”

“No, I mean… 똥. A poltergeist. Closer than the other ones.”

“I see. Miss Athena, if I might trouble you?”

From every direction, Athena’s musical voice rang out, warm and welcoming.

“Yes, Agent Zenyatta?”

“Do the perimeters remain secure?”

“They do. I saw a deer enter from the northeast approximately fourteen minutes ago, but that is the largest entity to have crossed the premises.”

Zenyatta looked at Hana, casting an orb to loop about her head and patting her arm soothingly. 

“You are among friends. We may find peace knowing danger is no closer than a fleeting thought.”

“Zen, _listen_ , this one was closer than the others. I know it was. It might not be in the perimeter, but it’s _close_. It can probably hear us, or smell us, or whatever they do.”

Zenyatta tilted his head at her, imploring.

“What would you like to do?”

“I want to go stop it before it gets any further.”

“Shall we contact Genji, Wi--”

“No. I can’t explain this to them. And they can’t get hurt. I can go alone, if you want.”

“You do not have to fight alone, Hana. I will love to accompany you, if you will allow me.”

She paused. Zenyatta was an omnic, so he would be safe. She could make sure of it.

“Thanks, Zen.”

“Of course.”

After leaving a brief message in the communications board that she and Zenyatta were going for ‘a walk’, she pulled on her holster, stuffing a few extra clips of ammunition into her pockets and setting out into the woods, something in her gut guiding her northward without thinking. The wilderness was quiet, the only sounds being the wind through trees and the birds chirping up above. Zenyatta followed without question, the two of them hiking their way deeper and deeper inland into Gibraltar, the trek enough to run Hana out of breath, but far within her abilities. They put her through worse courses than this in basic, and this time, she even got snack breaks. 

The sun was beginning to set when Hana started to hear the ‘geist’s heartbeat, slower than even hers and sickly, as if it were filled with sewage. It was distant, further than she’d ever been able to hear a pulse from before. She followed the sound like a beacon, pulling her gun from her hip and making sure she had a full clip loaded, Zenyatta’s obs humming as he readied them between his palms, the innocuous little spheres drifting lazy circles around his fingertips. The closer she got, the louder the other ‘geists’ pulses became, those hidden away in the wreckage of the city shuffling about in loose packs, too far to be much of a threat, but near enough to be heard. Hana was pretty sure the proximity would have driven her mad, were it not for the warm presence of Zenyatta’s orb hovering beside her ear, chiming like bells and lighting the darkening woods. He would be safe from any violence, including Hana’s own if things went south; poltergeists took no interest in omnics or the dead, like her, instead seeking out bodies that had never brushed death the way they had. Omnics had no heartbeats, no blood in their veins, and thus, were the last concern of poltergeists, for reasons Hana wasn’t completely solid on. But it meant he would be alright, no matter how this played out, and that’s what mattered. 

Slowly but surely, the nearer they came to the lone poltergeist, the more Hana’s skin began to crawl, every instinct in her body flashing warning signs, shrieking in her ears that she was being hunted, despite the fact that no ‘geist would notice her at all. By now, the sound of the ‘geist’s ugly heartbeat was cacophonous, thundering against her ears so loudly it hurt, her mouth tasting like cotton and her stomach rolling in disgust. Zenyatta saw it first, crouched in the undergrowth and picking at something, hidden by the growing dark of nighttime and the shadows the trees cast over the ground. 

He slung an orb at it, the shiny metal glowing violet as it came close, whizzing by only to loop back and stick like a planet pulled into orbit, circling around the beast’s head. Were Hana any less prepared to see it, she might have been frozen to the spot, the poltergeist raising its head to stare empily at the pair of them, once-brown eyes catching in the light to turn gold. Hana caught only a glimpse of its awful teeth as it opened its mouth, probably to call out to her, before she lined up her gun and pulled the trigger, the hard light round singing as it went right through the ‘geist’s head and thumped into the tree behind it, going dull as it cooled down. The ‘geist slumped over without a sound, through in the distance she could hear others coming closer, wanting to investigate whatever noise had just disrupted the forest’s calm.

“Nice shot,” someone said from behind them, and Hana nearly unloaded the whole clip into their skull. 

She hadn’t even heard them coming, still didn’t until she really listened, really tried to pick them out. Their heartbeat was like hers, slow and unnatural, but it beat so infrequently that it was easy to miss, blending in to the noises around the old city. She couldn’t hardly make out their face, but they were big. Bigger than her and Zenyatta, at least, enough to make the tactical part in her feel anxious. Two eyes, gold and reflective like the ‘geist from only moments ago, stared out of their face, flicking between she and Zenyatta with a kind of lazy hyperfocus that reminded Hana of her own face on camera playing a game that challenged; not quite in high alert, but far from careless. She saw the shine of a gun catch the moonlight where it hung on their hip. 

“Mind if I ask a question or two?”

Beside her, the violet-charged orb in Zenyatta’s hand sparked and hissed, menacing despite his calm disposition. 

“Hands off the gun,” Hana snapped. “Zen, give me a light.”

The hand hovering over the hip-holster slowly lifted the rest at the back of their neck, Zenyatta spinning an orb to rest beside their face and lighting it gold, the mystery ghoul wincing a little at the abrupt change in lighting. It was only a split second flinch, though, wide eyes flicking from the orb to the omnic stood at Hana’s side. Instinctively, she shouldered forward, shielding him with as much of her body as she could. 

“Wait, Zenyatta?” they asked. “That you, sunshine?”

The light against the ghoul’s face briefly brightened, illuminating the rest of their features. He was presumably male, a beard hugging his jaw and a crooked nose in the center of his face, his right eye and the skin around it warped and grey. The once-white sclera had turned black, making the inhuman gold of his irises stand out like something from a horror film. He grinned, and if Hana hadn’t heard him speak, she’d have thought he was a poltergeist in earnest. Zenyatta, however, seemed unfazed.

“Jesse?”

“Hey, kid. Good to see you kickin’. Sorry about the scare, there.”

“You know him?” Hana asked, still not moving her gun from where it was lined up with his head, not daring to blink and give him any chances.

“Yes. He is a close friend. Genji is rather fond of him, if I remember correctly.”

The stranger batted their eyelashes. 

“Did he? What did he say? Ooh, give me the details.” 

Hana ignored the joke(?), pieces falling into place in her head. Someone Zenyatta knew, well enough to be considered a “close friend,” who Genji liked, and who was also named Jesse.

“ _That’s_ Mccree?”

“In the flesh,” the ghoul-- Mccree, apparently-- shot back. “What’s your name, sharpshooter?”

“D.va,” she said, not quite willing to take Zenyatta’s claim at face value, much as she trusted him. “Why are you out here?”

“Respondin’ to the recall. Why’re you two?”

“None of your business,” Hana spat, at the same time Zenyatta said “easing our anxieties.”

Mccree clearly looked like he wanted to ask, but seemed to think better of it.

“...Alright. Ain’t my place to pry. Can I put my arms down, though?”

“Sure he’s safe, Zen?”

“I am.”

Slowly, Hana lowered her gun, flipping the safety back on and hooking it back into its holder, but keeping her hand on the grip. She was tired, twitchy, and not looking forward to the walk back. 

Zenyatta apparently didn’t share her concerns, floating over to meet Mccree and happily greeting him like an old friend. He joined them as they turned back to the base, meandering as he walked with a carelessness that infuriated her, as if she were no threat at all. 

Mccree was chatty, that was for sure; he and Zenyatta blabbered the whole way back to Gibraltar, catching up on what sounded like a long time spent apart. Between sparse moonbeams and, later, the rising sun, Hana opted to stay silent and observe a few things about their companion. For example, Mccree had a metal prosthetic on the same side as his dead eye, wore a _cowboy_ hat, of all things, had spurs on his shoes-- they hardly clicked when he walked, like a cat that had learned to balance the bell on its neck-- and most notably, he’d been a ghoul for a long, long time. Had to have been, to have developed the things he had: teeth like sabers and claws to match, huge protrusions of bone sprouted from the tips of his organic fingers that looked sharp enough to tear through just about anything, the grey tone to the whites of his one good eye, the alien brightness to his irises. He looked every bit a ‘geist, as if someone had taken the body of one and fit it over the brain of a relatively human-seeming man, still sane despite what must have been decades of duress. If Hana could be grateful for anything, it was that he didn’t ask her about her own ‘condition,’ despite definitely knowing about it. He could hear her own sickly heartbeat as surely as she could hear his.

She didn’t join in on the conversation, politely declining the opportunities to participate that Zenyatta tossed her way, too worn out from the spike and fall of adrenaline in her veins, irritable and looking forward to a warm reunion with her bed. She didn’t much like delivering judgements based on first impressions, but so far, her feelings toward Mccree were a solid ‘distrust.’ Unfair? Probably. Did she feel all that bad? Not really.

Zenyatta had apparently informed the others when they came back onto the watchpoint’s campus, because they’d gotten no more than thirty feet from the hangar when the elevator opened, unleashing a bolt of green as Genji launched himself across the tarmac and directly into Mccree, Hana politely averting her eyes as they reacquainted themselves with each other, Tracer gleefully blinking circles around them until she, too, got a chance to greet old friends, Winston shyly welcoming back their newest addition. Hana felt a stranger among them, ostracized and unrelated to the past they all seemed to share. 

She was excited to meet someone new, sure, but she couldn’t help the childish jealousy that weighed her down, feeling a whole lot like she’d been far secondary to the older members of Overwatch, more of a convenient ally than the friendship they seemed to share. She excused herself from celebratory breakfast early, unable to enjoy even the food-- not eggs, oatmeal, waffles, or anything of the sort, and Hana didn’t even have to make it-- too caught up in a mix of melancholy and exhaustion to be at all present in the happy conversation.

Returning to her room and showering was cathartic, but cleaning up the nail polishes and clothes on her floor was not, so she just piled it all into the corners and crawled into bed instead, kicking herself for being so selfish. She wasn’t a child on the playground and she had no right to anyone’s friendship, but she still couldn’t help feeling lonely now that she was out of the loop. Her only friends she’d left behind in Korea, a place she couldn’t return even if she wanted to. For the first time in a long time, Hana felt small. She felt young and wronged and irrationally distressed, afraid of Mccree, wittingly or not, exposing her to the few friends she had, the friends to whom she was only second best, so how would they respond once they knew, and--

Someone knocked on the door.

Hana rolled out of bed with no small amount of resistance, swiping her thumb over the door’s panel and trying to look less like she’d been spiraling as it slid open, a concerned Tracer standing outside, feet tapping the wood almost as fast as her time-warped heart beat against her chest.

“You alright, love?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” Hana lied, for the billionth time.

“Oh. Alright,” she looked a little distressed at the answer, rolling her lips together for a moment before she spoke again. “We were just worried, yeah? You ran off so fast. If you’re tired, I’ll let you be, but don’t feel like we don’t want you around. I felt like that, when I joined up in the old days, and it was right awful, for a while. So don’t go thinking you aren’t welcome, you hear? You’re among friends, now! We’d love to have you come back out with us, if you like.”

“Agents Mccree, Shimada, and Winston have asked after you eleven times since you left,” Athena supplied, and Tracer nodded enthusiastically, beaming.

“You’re one of us! Come on out, then!”

Sitting around wasn’t doing her any good, was it? The worst that could happen was she got a little less conversation. What could anyone do to hurt her, anyway? She was D.va. Not even death could keep her down. Awkward introductions were nothing. 

Hana smiled back, wadding her wet hair up on the top of her head and nodding. 

“Sure.” A pause. “How does Mccree feel about nail polish?”

Tracer flickered in glee, clapping her hands and bouncing on her toes. She giggled, and it sounded a little devious.

“Bet we can persuade him.”

Hana laughed, and this time, it was real. Maybe she wasn’t so alone, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the bits of korean are "what is this?" and "shit" respectively but im NOWHERE near educated in the language, so if theres any better way to say em let me know!! 
> 
> thanks as always 4 readin and quadruple thanks to those of you who comment bc you make my whole gotdamn universe i swear  
> i dont kno when the next chapter is gonna go up but its gonna be more character interaction than action, most likely, but after that were gonna see some drama!!! (i think? cannot stress enough how much i got no clue what the fuck im doin)
> 
> happy new year !!

**Author's Note:**

> as per always if yall have suggestions or critiques i love 2 hear yr thoughts !!!! 
> 
> i kno this chap was pretty short and SUPER cheesy/extra but uh. i love drama


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